Lincoln actually held office, unlike the pundits . . . and he basically got
read out of the Whigs.
Remember, he was elected as the only Whig Congressman in the Illinois
delegation, and made a great issue of the Mexican War. The Democrats
charged that he had voted against funding the soldiers in the field and
drove him out of office. The Whigs were terminally angry with Lincoln for
losing their only seat, and he was never accorded much prominence in the
party afterwards. His law partner described it as Lincoln's political
suicide . . . and, had the Republicans not formed, it might well have proved
to be just that.
The trouble is that commentators today really aren't risking that much.
They should be shaking lose before you see officeholders breaking away.
And, of course, the stakes are vastly greater today in terms of the lucre of
office.
I enjoy reading their pieces as a certain measure of how much residual
backbone the liberals have, but the real question's whether the sharp
rightward turn of the Democrats under Obama will shake lose some
officeholders--McKinney types perhaps . . . .
ML